Facebook gave Russian internet company data access extension

Facebook changed its policy in 2014 on how connected apps could access user data but granted extensions to access that data to various companies, including Mail.ru. Before the change, connected apps could access and collect the data of Facebook users that had given permission, as well as the data of those users’ friends who had not given permission.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook’s data practices have drawn the attention of U.S. politicians, particularly after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress over two days in April.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called for Facebook to reveal more information about its connections to Mail.ru.

“In the last six months we’ve learned that Facebook had few controls in place to control the collection and use of user data by third parties,” Warner said in an email. “Now we learn that the largest technology company in Russia, whose executives boast close ties to Vladimir Putin, had potentially hundreds of apps integrated with Facebook, collecting user data.”

“We need to determine what user information was shared with mail.ru and what may have been done with the captured data,” Warner said.

A spokesperson for Mail.ru said in a statement to Wired: “We definitely use our cooperation with Facebook strictly for business needs of our products and strictly according to the Facebook regulations.”